I tried to reflect on my work, but struggled to find a clear direction,
My research topics and material experiments haven’t fully come together yet,
I felt pressured to fit what I already had into a conceptual framework, especially while writing funding applications,
I’ve been trying to figure out what I really want to explore and what I want to say through my work.
Material Research
How can conductive yarn and thermochromic ink make the invisible flow of electricity visible through heat and colour?
How can knitting copper with different yarns, colours, and three-dimensional forms challenge the conventional appearance and materiality of electronic components?
How can reimagining speakers and microphones through copper and textile techniques challenge what we recognise as technology, while making its hidden mechanisms visible and tangible?:
How can handmade copper antennas reveal the invisible electromagnetic activity of everyday electronic devices?
Meeting Ebru 5.11
_showed her all my material research and shared my struggel
_She was especially intrigued by the knitted flower in relation to your data center research _She emphasized documenting my decisions, your hands, your processes and how things are made when working with textiles _encouraged me to recognize the skills I have developed and to make decisions about what to continue. (no need to incorporate every material experiment into my final project, some things can remain part of the learning process, and i can always return to them later) _ continue using the knitting machine, especially because I had already learned how to hack and work with it.
IDEA SKETCHES:
How does an image change as it moves between digital and textile processes, and what becomes lost, visible, or transformed through the decisions of algorithms, machines, materials, and hands?
What happens when the rigid, functional architecture of a data center is reimagined through the flexible, conductive practice of knitting?
How can knitted copper forms combine textile practice with speakers and microphones to question what counts as technology, while making hidden infrastructures visible and audible?
How can a performance with handmade textile antennas, microphones, and speakers make the hidden infrastructures of a data center audible, exploring what can be heard, transmitted, and what remains inaccessible?
What could a textile server look like, how might it function, and what could it reveal about the hidden material processes of digital infrastructures?
“Our own self-realization is the greatest service we can render the world.”
– Ramana Maharshi –
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SEPARATE SELF
Birth
No boundaries.
Only one single fluid stream of experience.
1 1/2 years
The cognitive self develops.
Unity splits into a subject (me) and an object (the world).
2–6 years
Language cements the ego.
Narrative identity.
7–12 years
The mind develops a past and a future.
The child doesn’t only live in the present moment.
Adolescence & Adulthood
The “I” is a complex web of beliefs, traumas, views, preferences,…
The “I” gets treated as a real, solid entity that has to be defended.
EGO MECHANISMS
(1)
The core illusion
The “I”-thought
→ forms the believe : I am a separate entity inside this body.
→ every thought that follows is a self-referencing thought.
(2)
The voice of the ghost
The inner voice talks in the first person.
The voice convinces you that it is you.
(3)
Time
The ego cannot exist in the present moment.
It drags your attention into the past (memories) or into
the future (imagination).
(4)
Defense structures
Drama & Friction
The ego loves being right, judging and playing the victim.
Drama gives the sense of “I” a role to play.
Intellectualization
The mind wants to label and categorize everything.
It creates a (false) sense of control to feel safe.
The body lock (Suffering)
When life doesn’t match the ego´s story, it creates resistance.
It binds the stress to the physical body to proove the story is real.
THE ILLUSION OF THE SEPARATE SELF ≠ TRUE SELF
“The Self is known to him who knows it not; he who knows it, knows it not. It is unknown to those who know, and known to those who know not.”
— Kena Upanishad –
What is the True Self?
It cannot be grasped as an object, a concept, a thought, or a definition by the mind.
Words can only point to the truth, they can never be it.
How do we remember our True Self?
Die before you die.
Letting go of everything you know about yourself.
A free fall into the unknown.
DIPLOMA
The pathless path:
an exploration without a predetermined route or outcome.
The diploma may develop into a collection of different works, connected by an underlying inquiry into uncertainty, control and the sense of self, rather than working towards one specific outcome.
I don’t want to decide in advance what the works should express, or whether they need to express anything at all. Some may relate to non-duality, while others may not.
I want to make room for all kinds of outcomes, also works that might seem trivial, unsuccessful, uninteresting, forced or awkward. I also want to make room for doubts, uncertainty and discomfort that may arise, rather than trying to resolve or overcome them. I don’t want to exclude these experiences simply because they don’t fit an idea of what a successful or meaningful artistic process should look like.
This also connects to the idea of the TRUE SELF in non-duality: not another identity to discover or create, but what we already are, beyond the stories and ideas we identify with. It also means questioning the tendency to define ourselves through what we do and create, rather than turning our work into another idea of who we are.
Water: Up to 200 L/s extracted for cooling; heated water returned to the Enns River (up to 30°C). problems could be also chemical -> Sulfat
Also: Approximately 100 permanent positions expected, noise ! No comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment (UVP) required., larger diesel reserves in the case of multiple emergency power generators
HEAT, NOISE, CHEMICALS ……
i looked for Inspiration…..
….back to making, with new wool
Copper wire
Textile Speaker
Projectname Inspiration
“Tu Nube Seca Mi Río” (Your Cloud Dries My River) is a grassroots activist movement in Spain that campaigns against the massive water and electricity consumption of hyper-scale data centers.
When Computers Where Woman: research article from Jennifer S. Light
Fiberpunk by Ebru Kurbak
Project Description first try
Textiles have long been entangled with computation. Yet textile practices, historically associated with feminized labour, remain largely overlooked in dominant narratives of technology. Often dismissed as trivial or decorative, they reveal deeper assumptions about whose skills and knowledge are valued.
Taking the Google data center in Kronstorf, the project investigates the material and ecological realities behind our seemingly immaterial digital world. What if a server could listen to its environment rather than merely extract resources from it? What if technology were built around care, interdependence and ecological awareness?
Through experimental knitting and handmade electronics I want to explores alternative ways of constructing computational technologies. By unraveling threads of textiles’ storied past and weaving possibilities for their future, the project challenges established ideas of what constitutes technology. Rather than accepting the narrow possibilities of dominant technological systems, it seeks to expand them, grounded in care and overlooked forms of knowledge.
Next Steps
-thermochronic yarn from last feedback with silkscreen print
-continue with the copper and different metal wires and building electronic parts out of it ! (use also digital knitting)
-Idea: Built a tool with sensors to measure temp, sound,…. of enns and use these data -making kind of an own server with the raspi -maybe go back to Kronsdorf and make proper images -use (iron)sulfat to color textile
I want to look into topics/behaviors/aesthetics/meanings of things like Speed up growth with fertilizers, cutting plants to shape, letting the garden grow wild, combine non organic and organic objects, adjust the landscape to fit a certian look, what decoration elements get used, what food crops are preferred, how do people use a garden, what feeling do people miss if they don‘t have a garden or maybe don‘t miss because they never lived with one…
wardiancase, Green guerillas, hironmus bosch, lawn/lawnmower
Feedback: narrow down topic, Kolunale Sommerfrische, Quinta da regaleira, Waldbaden Shinrin-Yoku, Pexton Glasshouse, Barbwire oder Zaun allgemein, Ungeziefermittel
Colonial summer resorts, similar to Tyrolean summer resorts, but in colonies such as Sapa in Vietnam Quinta da Regaleira: the park is orderly at the bottom and open at the top, with elaborately carved benches; the well shafts are not intended as wells but for ceremonial walks (connected to tunnels and grottoes) – in other words, lake fountains Waldbaden Shinrin-Yoku – Tyrolean common sense: the forest is good for you and restores people’s health pysical and mental
Pexton Glasshouse – the first large-scale greenhouse, designed for tropical plants, was heated underground using roaring coal stoves, featured a gravity-fed fountain, and had a transparent partition separating it from the outside, Emperior Fountain (Pexton) water pressure via elevation and gravity,
Library Research:
Kitchen garden and pleasure garden; water is fundamental; obtaining water and retaining it there,
Egyptian gardens – luxury, and closely linked to life and death. The pharaohs wanted their tombs to be in gardens; rich gardens were carved into their tombstones; the tree goddess was a very important symbol. There were almost no ladders – people (slaves referred to as ‘monkeys’) would climb the tree trunks, or real monkeys were tamed.
Oriental gardens – palm gardens, shade, open to all, 1/3 city, 1/3 river, 1/3 garden; gardeners received 1/3 of the harvest; palm trees were pollinated by hand; the only place to find shade outside the garden; dates were harvested too early and then artificially scored to control their ripening process
Books:
Gartenkunst: Bilder und Texte von Gärten und Parks (Ursula Storch) Garten Eden: der Garten in der Kunst seit 1990 Der Familien-Garten: phantasievolle Ideen, praktische Bauanleitungen, einfache Pflanzentips Der Garten von der Antike bis zum Mittelalter Gärten der Welt: Orte der Sehensucht und Inspiration Warum ein Apfel, Eva? die Bildsprache von Baum, Frucht Blume
hironimus bosch – der Garten der Lüste
A locked garden, a sealed spring; The Romance of the Rose novel: ‘Here, the garden is a secret place beyond the orderly world of everyday life, where sexual fantasies can be acted out. The sacred/forbidden behind the hedge In the geometric Baroque gardens there were also mazes and dark grottoes’
Der Garten ist der letzte Luxus unserer Tage, denn er fordert das, was in unserer Gesellschaft am seltesten und kostbarsten geworden ist: Zeit, Zuwendung und Raum –
Dieter Kienast A garden is the ultimate luxury of our times, for it demands what has become the rarest and most precious commodity in our society: time, attention and space
It looks like that the meaning of Gardens changes a lot with where you are, they are very local. When i say Garden i mean something like back garden, yard, Hausgarten, residental garden, private gardens (not communal like Dutch hofje)
Hard-edge painting movement
baby is three – Robyn Denny (other similar stuff Josef Albers)
Prisions Prisions are integral to society and to capitalist economic systemy by stabilizing and maintaining deviant populations at the same time that their lack of public visibility and public access relegates them to the margins of socity.
My Garden history (gardens that felt like an outddor extension of my home) and comparing them to where i live now. In the city is no space to have a garden
Scale Comparision of Gardens in which i grew up (red is Angewandte OKP Courtyard,yellow my appartement)
Experiments: How could a garden be felt beyond its borders?
Make clothing feel/look like you would have been in a garden, Bring the garden close to your body;
Idea: move textiles or shirts/pants through flower fields, grass, earth, rose thorns, bushes with berrys, trees… to stain the fabric.
indoor flower garden element
wooden beam of a garden shed with cow bell fringes
if you look at it, it makes you want to pull out the strings (one color segment)
i came to the conclusion city and garden dont work, at least none that i would long for.
elements of my dream garden written on paper with city garden sounds
I was walking through Prater and Prater woods, Wednesday 16:00-17:45. grey weather 15*C Maximum duration without passing another person 1:03sec Maximum duration without crossing a dog 1:28sec Maximum distance without crossing a footpath 25m Maximum duration without hearing a dog, person, traffic 0sec
experiment with recoil starter(Seilzugstarter) mechanism [abstract]
when mowing the lawn you see the trace where you had been already
negotiate the borders via drawing of a clay model of a watering can
rust experiments with wood chips (oak and other), vinegar, loam, water. + 1 image planting an Apple Tree in 1.District Vienna
Feedback: what kind of feedback do i want? selma did a project with a “original” forest in austria, the forests in tirol are also not natural, stonegardens
read Books
The One Straw Revolution Mein Garten(buch) -Jamaica Kincaid Die gegenstandslose Welt (Kasimi Malewitsch) Books about Bruce Nauman
SB Mowing Youtube channel – mows abdoned gardens while filming about 600k Views in 10 days, videos 1-2mio views
Experiements with growing microgreen extrusions
maybe use bread as substrate (so much thrown out)
Can we construct rewilding?
How would a rewilded face look like?
What does a rewilded appartment feel like?
What would a rewilded (post-colonial) wardrobe look like?
